Wisdom, by award-winning photographer Andrew Zuckerman (Wild Dog Press), records the faces, ideas and ideals of 50 global icons over the age of 65.
Writers, artists, architects, designers and musicians mingle with leaders in religion, business and politics in a kaleidoscope of thoughts and perspectives. In this extract African literary lion Chinua Achebe considers colonialism and art
The kind of damage colonial rule does is that you no longer have the ability to rule yourself. If you walk in and take over someone’s land and even his person, that victim will not be able, at short notice, to take over. You say, “Okay, I give you independence.”
That person has already lost the habit of independence over years, over decades, sometimes over centuries. So it’s a question of beginning to reinvent yourself the way your ancestors must have done thousands of years ago, because they learned to rule themselves and organise themselves. We don’t have it. So it’s not even an option to say, “Okay, I leave, you take over.” It’s going to go on for a long time.
We must learn about ourselves, about our past. It’s a matter of schooling, but not the kind of schooling that colonial rule brought: training for somebody else’s advantage. This new education is going to be for your own good and, in the end, for the good of the world. Because we are all in it, you know. We’re worse hit than the invaders, but the invaders are just as helpless to save themselves as their victims.
The emphasis must, of course, stay with the colonised people. Not their colonisers. If they can work together to bring about a different future, that would be wonderful. But nothing is guaranteed in this situation, nothing is promised. Even the language doesn’t exist. If you read the poetry, for instance, of colonised Africa, let’s take a piece from Senghor: “They call us cottonheads and coffee men and oily men.
They call us men of death. But we are the men of dance whose feet only gain power when they beat the hard soil.” It’s not a very friendly conversation, and this is a gentle poem. You’ll find a poem that begins: “The white man killed my father / my father was strong. The white man raped my mother / my mother was beautiful. The white man killed my brother in the noonday heat and then turning to me he said, ‘Boy, a drink, a chair, a napkin’.” You see, the chances of easy and pleasant discussion are limited.
The difference between European colonialism in Africa and American imperialism in the Middle East is that the British were there for a long time and intended to be there forever. They also had to use the local talent, not only because they thought it was good to train the natives; they’d also taken on more than they could chew. They were rather greedy. A quarter of the world was British and so there was no way they could manage this themselves.
They had young graduates of Cambridge and Oxford going out to be administrative officers. Well, there were not enough of them, not even to run a place like Nigeria, not to talk of India. So they were forced to bring in the natives. “Okay, you can do this as you’ve always done it, but we will be watching just to make sure you don’t misbehave.” That kind of thing. So it was forced on them to introduce what they call “indirect rule”.
Now, the Americans have not taken on as much as the British had and have not had the experience — they have a kind of history that praises their own history profoundly, so it’s difficult to conceive of the evil that they might be perpetrating when they go out with the excuse that they are trying to help. And so I would say the difference is, first, lack of experience and, second, lack of humility. The American clearly believes that he has the best system in the world and that nobody should be looking for anything else. But that’s not the way it is.
If you’re grabbed by art I think you should do whatever comes best to you. Whether it’s a novel or a play or a song, it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you are doing something about the situation. I can’t explain to you why fiction, why prose, except that that’s how it came to me. The way the work imposes itself on you is part of its power, and you respect it or you fight with it all your life. So I found the novel form and it seemed to me to work.
The first attempt I made was when I was a student in the University College of Ibadan. I was told by my teachers from England, “This is a good piece of work, but it lacks form.” I said, “Okay, what’s form? Can you tell me what form is?” and the lecturer said, “All right, we’ll talk about it next week. I’m going to play tennis now.” But we didn’t talk about it next week, we didn’t talk about it next month. Long afterwards she came to me and said, “You know, I looked at your story and I think it’s all right.” So I didn’t learn what form was. Actually, she had nothing to teach me — it was a kind of instruction to me that this is something you have to do on your own. Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am and what I need, these are things I have to find out myself.
Every tradition has something another tradition can use. Everywhere. When younger Nigerians who think they are going to be writers say, “Look, you are very lucky, there were things to write about then. Today there’s nothing,” I say, “That’s not true. There’s no time when there is nothing to write. You haven’t found it, or maybe you haven’t looked hard enough.” The same way every culture has something to offer, if we are ready to look at it on its own terms and with a certain humility, we will find something we can use.
That’s the way I have gone about it: using what is made available to me. If someone says, for instance, “The old English novel is something that the English created, why should I use it?”, “Why not?” is what I say. This is what I spent years of my childhood, into adulthood, learning. I didn’t ask to be given an English education, but I’ve got it and now that I’ve got it, I might as well use it. I’m not going to say, “I will not use the English language.” I have no fight with any language. I will use whatever is useful to me.
My father was an orphan, so he was raised by his uncle, who was a man of considerable importance in the town. Then the missionaries came and one of the first places they went was my father’s uncle’s house, because he was a prominent man. The missionaries wanted to use his home as a base and he received them. But he didn’t like their singing. He said it sounded like somebody died in that place. So he sent them away with his best wishes. But my father was fascinated by these people and their story and, to cut a long story short, he became a convert.
His uncle did not try to stop him, even though these people sang terribly. He let my father go with them because that was what he wanted to do. And so you had these two people — my father who became a missionary teacher and spread the Christian gospel in different parts of society, and his uncle who refused to join this new faith. My father even tried to change him, and my great-uncle pointed at all his titles and said, “What do I do with these?” I admire both people. First, my great-uncle who stood fast: “This is what I know and that’s what I will keep. If you want to go and learn something out there, fine, go and good luck.” And my father, who joined the Christians because he thought their message, the gospel, was going to be valuable to his society, and got an education and started me and my siblings on the road of education. I don’t choose between these two. Each dealt with the situation that was presented to him.
What worries me maybe more than anything else in Africa is the inability of the leaders to understand that no one person has the answers to everything. No leader, no single leader has the ability to run a country, a huge country such as Nigeria or Congo year after year after year. I thought the example of Mandela in South Africa saying: “After four years, someone else” would have been received by leadership throughout Africa. But it hasn’t. Nobody heard that message. You have people who are in power for 20 years or people who had four years and they want another four or five. We have to move away from this idea that only “I” can do it, because that’s not true.
Nobody can teach me who I am.